OsmoBTS is building up on work done previosuly for OpenBSC (e.g. RSL, OML, RTP) and OsmocomBB (e.g. LAPDm). The Abis/IP protocol staking is inspired by ip.access A-bis/IP, sometimes called IPA multiplex.

OsmoBTS is modular and has support for multiple back-ends. A back-end talks to a specific L1/PHY implementation of the respective BTS hardware. Based on this architecture, it should be relatively easy to add a new back-end to support so-far unsupported GSM PHY/L1 and associated hardware.

So far OsmoBTS has been integrated with several different L1/PHY and hardware systems. The backends are:

Osmocom provides binary packages for several flavors of Debian and Ubuntu GNU/Linux on a variety of architectures (i586, x86_64, armhf, armv7l). Unless you are a software developer interested in developing on Osmocom, it is recommended you use those packages instead of building from source.